Wings of the Night
by Kalikedeshi
Summary: Inspired by MF Ghost. Legendary street racers have come and gone, but when a professional racing series starts up that aims to challenge a driver's skills, new blood tends to flow in. Question is, which one will win, the old hounds or the new dogs?


**1989** \- the Nissan Skyline GT-R returns after a very long absence from the motor racing world. Motoring journalists - and fans - are in shock at its effectiveness and raw speed, the Australian magazine _Wheels_ naming it the Godzilla. Within weeks, many aftermarket parts are made specifically for it.

 **1990** \- various racing manufacturers around the world begin upgrading and tuning their existing race vehicles to combat this new competitor. In Japan, street racing reaches an all time high as the aftermarket scene experiences an unexpected boom.

 **1991** \- a few known legends arise from both the touge street racing and the highway street racing culture. For the touge, the Fujimoto Brothers rise as the undisputed kings of the Hakone Area, whilst owner of Nissan tuning shop Kuroda Kazuma and his partner Hayato Yamashita, also a tuning shop manager, have much of Northern Kanto under their control. Meanwhile, Keiichiro Matsubara and his team, the Blue Lightning, base themselves on the Tsuchisaka mountain pass and are extremely fast, even on other foreign passes.

In the expressway, former Finnish racing driver turned illegal street racer Kane Salonen has the key to the Bayshore Route's lock, dominating the competition with his near-megawatt 1987 Pontiac Trans Am.

 **1992** \- in response to the rising street racing threat possibly endangering innocent motorists and bystanders, as well as potentially causing millions of yen in collateral damage should a high speed vehicle crash into an important establishment, the government employs the ASR bill - Anti-Street Racing. This allows the police force's pursuit division to requisition whatever vehicle they require to apprehend both the mountain and the expressway racers. At first, the police have difficulty as the racers prove to be very skilled and very good tuners, but as weeks passed, slowly more and more racers are apprehended, the weakest going down first.

 **1993** \- responding to the police, the Mid Night club harassed the Highway Interceptors to attract more attention to them and get some heat off the other groups, while also participating in the thrill and rush that they race for. A few members are caught, but for the most part they succeed in their plan as the police are overwhelmed with the extremely fast vehicles of the MNC, often reaching speeds above 200 miles per hour.

 **1994** \- even more street racers start appearing, most coming into the mountain pass racing. The Japanese government finally passes down a law forbidding any sort of high speed driving, any perpetrators caught in the act will have their license removed and their car impounded, possibly crushed. Despite this, any existing street racers continue in their activities, tuning, upgrading and racing as they go. Newcomers are deterred, however.

For the next five years the status quo would go on. Kuroda and Hayato's tuning shop, Spec-RD, would prove to be a very successful company as both retire from the street racing world, leaving a massive power vacuum in Northern Kanto. In the ensuing chaos, street racing team The Timberwolf Raiders would prove to be very skilled, and through the course of four years slowly take over the throne that the Nissan Duo left behind.

 **1999** \- the Mid Night Club's crash on the expressway that left two dead and eight hospitalized leaves the club permanently disbanded. With the large media attention on the crash, as well as no longer being harassed by the club, the police decide to take full action against all kinds of street racing taking place in Japan. Racers who are caught are immediately put to prison and their vehicles crushed; Any who are left quickly take their highly tuned cars into a safe location, most of which were never found even to this day.

 **2000** \- with most of the serious racers either retired or in prison, and many wannabes who possess very little skill quickly being arrested, street racing in Japan is officially declared dead. Shortly afterward, the media eats up the whole situation, calling the police 'corrupt' and that the punishment enforced were 'completely unfair'. Not much attention is drawn, however, and soon the entire situation is swept under a rug.

 **2005** \- bad memories resurface when construction workers who were planning on demolishing an old Spec-RD factory discovered a silver R34 GT-R V-Spec II N1 belonging to Kuroda Kazuma, given to him by Nismo to assist in what would eventually become the Nismo Z-Tune. It looked to be in mostly good condition, except upon closer inspection it lacked an engine and most of the suspension. The exterior seemed fairly basic, with Nismo Z-Tune aerodynamic parts and quarterpanels, while the LMGT4 rims are painted bare carbon fiber.

The car was quickly taken in by Nismo's Omori factory and kept in storage for some time, where it was slowly rebuilt with working parts.

 **2006 -** a new racing series starts up in Japan, called "GT-X". The official description is that it is based off of a type of rally racing, except there is no co-driver and multiple drivers battle others in their own category, the lowest being A and the highest being D.

* * *

A class vehicles tend to be more street based, and as such, hardcore racing equipment such as carbon panels, full rollcages and carbon bucket seats and such are strictly prohibited. Horsepower is limited to 280 horsepower, Japan's old 'Gentleman Agreement' limit (now no longer being followed).

B class vehicles are less restricted, now being allowed to use half-cages to assist in stiffening the chassis, slightly fatter tires and more adjustable suspension kits. Some downforce is allowed, such as rear wings and canards, however the amount of downforce generated from these elements are restricted only to a certain amount.

In C class is where things start getting crazier. The driver's cars are now able to reach 600 wheel horsepower, with racing elements like full rollcages, semislicks, carbon doors and body panels and such being free game to anyone who has the budget. The drivers themselves are of a different caliber, usually being drivers trained by professional racing drivers or former/retired racing drivers still looking to keep their blade sharp.

D class drivers are usually professional racing drivers in Japan, or D1GP drifters who switched to the pro racing league for a reason or another. The vehicles found in this class are almost entire unrestricted, the only regulations being the amount of horsepower allowed, which is 800 horsepower maximum, and the prohibition of nitrous oxide. Everything else, such as downforce and tire grip, suspension work and so on are open season for the race teams.

* * *

Every event starts off in a similar fashion to Formula 1 - first there are three Free Practice sessions, where each driver runs up and down the road as much as they like and gives the opportunity for the mechanics to fine-tune their vehicles down to the last degree. Qualifying, however, is more straightforward compared to Formula 1. Each driver goes for one run both uphill and downhill, and the average for both is calculated then put into a leaderboard, where the fastest driver is first and so on.

* * *

The race tracks themselves are famous mountain passes, formerly used by street racers and drifters of old, that have since been refurbished and re-engineered to both keep the spirit of the mountain roads while also having a degree of safety. Included in these passes are Haruna, Akagi, Myogi, and Usuitouge.

 **2007** \- GT-X is successful as many famous racing drivers, such as Keiichi Tsuchiya and Manabu Orido transfer over, displaying their high skill and on-the-limit driving.

 **2008** \- a surge in popularity for GT-X as on-board footage of two drivers battling in the Akagi stage is uploaded onto YouTube, a website on the internet where users can publicly upload videos for others to watch. Within a week, the video in question gains over 2.5 million views.

 **2011-** **2017 -** after its popularity all over the world skyrockets within months, the FIA officially sanctions the GT-X as an official motorsport, setting up similar stages and venues all across North America, Europe and Asia. Other professional racing drivers from various disciplines start transitioning over to GT-X to have a taste of its rally-like speed, the most notable being former Formula 1 World Drivers' Champion Fernando Alonso, driving for Team BMW based in Berlin, racing alongside teammate Sabine Schmidt.

Meanwhile, Kuroda's R34 in the Omori factory has gone missing. An investigation starts as everyone involved in handling the vehicle is questioned, but little to no information is gained about who could have stolen the car, and where it might have ended up. Soon, the case closes thanks to almost no evidence being found.

Back in Japan, the rapidly rising demand for aftermarket performance parts for domestic vehicles brings the almost-dead tuning scene back from the living, and soon a new 'tuner culture' is born, based purely on making a slow car go fast, no more bosozoku or "rice", as most people call it. The Blue Lightning racing team is resurrected, with the children of its members basing once more on Tsuchisaka. Their main rivals, the Timberwolf Raiders (having survived the years by recruiting new street racers and training them to high standards) challenge them to a street race on their home turf in response, which leads to the first illegal street race in years. Thanks to being in a remote location that's fairly far from civilization, no police activity arrived to interrupt. The winner of the challenge was never known, being known only in secret between team members.

 **2018 -** GT-X's popularity grows ever more across the globe through the years, eventually being the most viewed form of motor racing.

 **2026 -** the R34 GT-R belonging to Kuroda Kazuma, which went missing years ago, suddenly reappears in the Hakone Turnpike.

* * *

 **AUGUST 28, 2026 -** **RE-AMEMIYA TURNPIKE**

Empty roads greet the former WTCC drivers' champion Melissa Whitings as she drives toward the winding mountain pass of the Turnpike, now owned by RE Amemiya.

Since the GT-X officials were still setting up the stadium at the very bottom and top of the mountain itself (places where entrants can eat, sit down, engage in car-related activities such as a car show, and so on), the road was still open for public use, and as such any driver is able to get out their road-legal car and go for a cruise, familiarize themselves with the road before attacking it in Free Practice and Qualifying.

Of course, since Melissa is arguably the "face" of the sport and being the most popular driver purely due to her overwhelming online presence, she simply _has_ to attach a camera to her dashboard and livestream her cruise.

Subconsciously shifting to second gear to take the next winding corner at a safe speed, she continues talking to her audience about various subjects, mostly discussing things related to GT-X and the history and culture of automobile racing in Japan.

"...I mean seriously, if they really wanted to discourage illegal street racing, why didn't they set up official sanctioned events where they can actually race legally, like track days or something like that?"

Seeing the tollbooth at the top, Melissa slows the car to a stop to allow the booth operator to lift the bar.

"Going up for a pre-practice run?" He asked.

"Yep, only have a few hours left until the actual FP1 begins, so I'm taking my time to go up and down, familiarize myself first." Having already met the operator at the GT-X base of operations at the bottom, it wasn't that hard to engage in casual conversation with him. Most of the time Melissa will be polite and formal with people she's never met before (unless she is drunk).

"Alright then, go on ahead. Just be careful, we've been hearing a car ripping it up and down the road for the past few days. He never reaches the top near the Viewing Lounge and hotels, nor does he go all the day down to here, so he's probably using an old service road that barely anyone knows about."

The toll bar raised up as operator continued to talk to Melissa.

"And we haven't seen it once?"

"Nope, not once. We've considered sending out drones, but they don't go high enough for us to see past the trees."

They switch the subject and continue talking for a few more minutes before they eventually part ways.

"Well, see ya!" She says, driving past the toll booth into the empty road.

It takes a few minutes of driving in her AMG GT, talking to herself and to the audience she currently has, until she passes by a road off to the side. The quality of said road is horrible, there are many potholes and there's vegetation everywhere, but it seems to have been used recently judging by the tire marks on the surface. _Huh, must be the service road the operator was talking about._

She pays it no mind as she continues driving up.

After driving for roughly a kilometer, she suddenly downshifts and pins the throttle on a wide open straightaway. "Here we go!"

Using her slight familiarity with the road, thanks to prior video footage, Melissa attacks the long winding corners with little fear, relying on her aerodynamics to propel her through the corner with little trouble. Once there was a time where she was heavily criticized because of her wild and aggressive driving style, wearing down the tires with mental corner entry speeds, all the way back in her WTCC days. Now, though, she's allowed to drive the way she likes thanks to having more freedom with the rules (and also the type of road she drives on, though most don't pay attention to that fact).

However, minutes after she started attacking the road, Melissa starts to hear... a peculiar noise. It's the sound of an engine, not hers, coming from behind. This excites her greatly - one of the most exhilarating feelings to her is battling another driver head to head on a tight road such as this. She slows down and waits for the presumed car to catch up - and judging by the note of the sound, it's a very fast one.

 _Come on!_ Reaching a relatively long straightaway, she glares intensely at the rear view mirror as she continues to wait. The sound of the engine gets ever closer until finally, the silhouette of a car forms just past the previous corner. She looks away and downshifts to make it through the next bend, but keeps her foot off the gas to wait for the pursuer.

A minute of cruising later and the engine from behind grows very close until in her rear view mirror...

"Wait a minute, is that one of ours?"

...a silver R34 appears, its GT-R badge shining brightly in the sunlight.


End file.
